


The Small Joys We Harvest

by morningmikan



Series: the long seasons [2]
Category: JUDGE EYES: 死神の遺言 | Judgment, 龍が如く | Ryuu ga Gotoku | Yakuza (Video Games)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, still much more cheerful than higashi though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26228341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningmikan/pseuds/morningmikan
Summary: A history of a simple man with a taste for things too complex for his own good. Kaito figures it's fine if he doesn't understand all of it, as long as he can keep up.
Relationships: Higashi Toru/Kaito Masaharu, Kaito Masaharu/Yagami Takayuki
Series: the long seasons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641178
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	The Small Joys We Harvest

#### origin stories

_“What did I do to deserve a disaster like you?”_

Kaito counts down in his head, and there it is, right on time: waterworks, handwringing, mixing up which guy to blame - him or his dad? Today she gets it wrong, thinks he got into it with some bottom-rung assholes from fuck-knows-which-family in a dirty parking lot, but _that_ was his dad last week.

They look alike, so he supposes it evens out.

 _His_ fight was a paid job, one of a bunch he’s done already - always with some Kansai guy in an expensive suit waving around 10,000 yen bills in front of loitering teens. Jump these specific kids from such-and-such highschool, fracture some bones, pocket some easy money, _we’ll put in a good word if you wanna swear up_. He doesn’t care why the guy is so into seeing highschool baseball players get fucked up - he just knows it’s good cash and it’ll be enough to get him out of Nagoya for good.

The man paying doesn’t know that Kaito’s still days away from turning fifteen - just sees a big kid with a mean mug and a hard-on for punching the shit out of people. That suits Kaito just fine. 

What Kaito doesn’t expect this time is for all of them to get the _absolute living shit_ kicked out of them by _one_ fucking second year student - some honors type asshole with a pretty face that was already going sour in the middle. He’s got the same uniform as the boys they’re supposed to find, and they would’ve just added him to the pile if he didn’t suckerpunch the biggest guy in their gang and drop him like a lead weight.

Things went to shit fast: two of them run up at the kid, but he sees them coming and uses his school bag like a wrecking ball to knock them back. Even now Kaito can feel that hit in the back of his teeth - those guys got laid the fuck out and Honours Asshole barely looked out of breath as he just reaches into the bag and grabs a hardcover to bludgeon them with. 

Another of the group tries to get smart with a knife, real scumbag shit, and if he happens to trip over Kaito’s backward scramble to get away from a thrown history textbook, well, first rule of getting into a brawl is knowing when to move your ass out of the way. Knifeboy gets a running knee to his chin for his trouble, and this is when Kaito realises _holy shit this guy’s not normal what the fuck_ and lets the others try to play tough as he hangs back to watch.

Sidestep, right hook, corner of _Nihon Shoki_ to the mouth; knockback the arm, drop low for a gutpunch, break the nose with a knee when they double over; duck under a clothesline tackle, _pick up a bike and fuckin’ swing it,_ stomp down on the bike chassis and make your point.

Kaito would’ve _clapped_ if he weren’t simultaneously scared shitless and itching to punch the pouting mouth right off the guy.

Kaito runs forward and tackles him from behind, and they grapple until he gets a lucky elbow to the stomach and both of them roll away to get to their feet. They run at each other, he catches the older boy with a solid hit with his longer reach and breaks his nose, but then this long-lashed motherfucker does some funny doublestep on Kaito’s next swing that puts him in his blindspot - a fist strikes Kaito’s ear, a kick catches him on the back of his head, and then it’s over.

No one ends up getting paid the second half of the fee.

Kaito can’t exactly _explain_ all of this to his mother though - she just sees the bruises on his face and the shame of getting a police officer at her door when she’d only gotten half her makeup done for her evening shift. She yells and he just works his tongue against the inside of his cheek, wondering if he could feel the bruises on the other side (he can).

He thinks: even if he didn’t get the full payment since the job got fucked, the upfront alone was enough to pay for the train he has to take to Tokyo. His savings should be enough now to find some shitty apartment where they don’t ask questions, maybe near Kamurocho. 83,000 yen should be enough to buy him a month or two to find a job, right?

He gets a slap to the face for standing there and saying nothing - _ungrateful_ , she says - and it hurts but it doesn’t _hurt_ , not anymore. She’ll go to work and come back to an empty apartment in the morning, and Kaito’s pleased with himself for figuring out something that’ll finally make them both happy. He goes to bed content, knowing his bags are packed and the cash is safe in his jacket pocket, cheek still stinging as he slips into an easy sleep.

***

He takes it back - 83,000 yen doesn’t mean _shit_ in Tokyo.

***

If anyone asked Kaito if he had worries about falling into his dad’s line of business despite the shit he got from his mother, he’d say _for about thirteen years, then puberty hit_. He’d gotten used to being seen as another big dumb thug from a trashy family, and if he was honest, it had its perks: no one fucked with him on principle, and the ones who _did_ were either satisfying to crush or satisfying to fight.

See, fights are _honest_ , even if he isn’t - they don’t always start that way, yeah, but two guys proving their ability to endure and push their bodies to the limit was just one of the best ways to just _talk_. Pretty and elegant words swerve around the truth at best or tangle knots into intentions at worst - that sorta shit’s best left to hostesses and businessmen.

This philosophy worked pretty well for Kaito until he meets (well, _tried to jump_ , keyword being _tried)_ Matsugane Mitsugu on his fifth day in Kamurocho.

“Kid, let me tell you something,” Matsugane says, fixing Kaito’s jacket collar not minutes after he’d used it to cut off Kaito’s windpipe. “You’re smarter than you look but dumber than you think, and I can work with that. You got parents? No? Come with me, then.”

Kaito got laid out flat by a man older than his dad in under two minutes, and he had never once mentioned the lapel pin, his family, or called out for his boys to help him. Instead he picks up Kaito and dusts him off, and they walk along Shichifuku talking about baseball and the coming autumn. It’s a meaningless, meandering conversation with nothing hidden under it, and Kaito hazards a guess that this is maybe the kind of thing regular fathers and sons talk about. It’s strange, but not a bad feeling at all.

When the time comes, Kaito looks down at the sake cup in front of him and doesn’t have to think twice.

###### 

#### Ta-bo

“Do you ever _stop_?” Kaito snarls, pinning the kid’s head against the brick wall.

Yagami grins through the blood in his mouth and tries to do some fancy leg sweep despite being shoved up in a clumsy angle. Kaito has to let go of him to avoid getting his knees clipped, and has half a mind to grab the nearest garbage bin lid and go to town when he notices no follow through. The kid just wheezes against the wall, still grinning through the sweaty strands of long hair plastered against his face.

It’s a goddamn shame that a face that pretty was wasted on someone as twisted up as Yagami Takayuki.

“The guy was just standing right _there_ ,” Yagami laughs, his reckless tough guy affectation falling flat. Kid’s too young to pull it off convincingly, and there’s an edge of desperation to his voice that Kaito’s recognised in any number of shitty chinpira milling around the arcade.

“ _You jumped him right outside our damn office_. I don’t give a fuck what you’re tryna prove, you don’t embarass oyaji by starting shit with his boys in front of everyone to see, you ungrateful little prick.”

“‘ _Ungrateful’_?” the kid says, genuinely confused. It makes Kaito _furious._ He grabs Yagami by the collar and pulls him up roughly, making the kid yelp.

“Yakuza live and die by their face, and the faster you fuckin’ learn that, the quicker you’ll realize how close you’ve been to blowin’ up everything that’s been done for you. I dragged your ass back into this shitty alley so no one can see me beating on our oyaji’s adopted son for being a fuckin’ _idiot.”_

He can see the wheels spin in Yagami’s head as he frowns and suddenly feels exhausted - was _he_ ever this fucking annoying when he was sixteen?

“Wait, isn’t oyasan’s word law? Logically, wouldn’t you catch shit for beating me up?”

Kaito shakes him like a dog.

“One, oyaji _himself_ would agree that you’d deserve to get your skull rattled around for being such a little asshole, just not in front of an audience. Two, you really think I’m about to let some squirrely teenage prettyboy get the better of me?”

Kaito drops him, and mercifully Yagami doesn’t say anything with his smart mouth - just wipes at his face with the back of his hand, sullen and scowling. It’s the only moment that makes Kaito feel a twinge of guilt - he just looks so _young_. Kaito was barely any different when he made it up to Kamurocho himself, just another angry little barking stray who got scooped up by Matsugane-no-oyaji. The man can really pick them.

Kaito sighs.

“Get up, Ta-bo. I’ll get you cleaned up at the office.”

The kid grimaces. “‘Ta-bo’? You’re not even that much older than me -”

Kaito pulls him up none too gently and starts hustling him out the alley. “Act like a kid and you get called a kid’s name. Start acting grown and we’ll talk about changing it.”

Ta-bo mutters, just full of surly teenage bullshit for the sake of appearances and Kaito convinces himself that, no, he was never this fucking annoying when he was that age.

***

Thing is, Ta-bo grew on Kaito - kinda like the robust mould that was growing in an old Poppo bento at the back of his fridge. Look away for just a moment and suddenly years passed and the guy’s enmeshed with the entirety of Kaito’s life, to the point that it became hard to remember the times when he wasn’t around. He even grew fond of him, unlike the mould.

Watching Ta-bo get into scraps (and having to fish him out of them) filled Kaito with the warm sense of nostalgia for his own semi-feral boyhood, and Kaito would be lying if he didn’t spend half his babysitting time for Ta-bo just watching the kid fight other little assholes on the street and deeply enjoying himself. It was nice to have the little shit direct his snarly ex-housecat energy onto other street punks instead of him; it was even better to watch Ta-bo grow into something just a bit closer to a tiger.

Ta-bo these days moved like a dancer when he fought: falling into disciplined forms as smooth as flowing water, swiftly gliding between opponents with precise turns of his heel, and, very occasionally, running up the side of a wall to twist his legs over someone’s head and drill them into the cement. That shit got Kaito to his feet _every_ time.

Only on nights when Kaito drank too much and was in that hazy space before he fell asleep did his mind wander to Ta-bo’s movements when he fought: the arc of his hands shaping the air, the slope of his back flowing into each stance, his face set in concentration. One hand pulled back in a low fist, _waiting_ ; the other raised with palm forward, _fearless_.

Ta-bo had some quote he liked to repeat each time Kaito wondered why he didn’t swear up - something metaphorical about making swords? He supposes it makes sense. All the fights Ta-bo gets into is like a hammer to his form, hard-fought discipline that strengthened the steel in his spine to keep him moving forward despite the odds stacked against him. Sharp, unstoppable, _beautiful._

It was also _sad_ , if he thinks about it for too long - fighting was maybe the only thing that Ta-bo had left of his old man, a gift taught to him that he could only feel and touch when skulls bounce off cement and blood streaks his teeth. Lotta strings attached to something originally given for free.

Kaito stops binging his booze right before bed these days. Going to bed philosophical means falling asleep depressed, and some shit’s just not his business to get into, no matter how much he wants to pry it open.

Instead, he lets Ta-bo practice with him - every new trick or move Ta-bo learns from other street fights, kung-fu movies they watch together when Kaito is stuck at the office and Ta-bo wanted company, failed techniques by guys who think they have one over him but were different enough that it merited workshopping, all of it. It helped that Ta-bo could never actually _beat_ Kaito, but it was a rush to see the blows come a little quicker, a little harder. It’s a hell of a thing to witness, and Kaito wonders if Ta-bo’s old man might be glad of it being with him and not any of the hundred temptations the city had for a hot-blooded young man.

One day, _maybe_ , Ta-bo might win. But it’s not today, when they’ve just finished scrapping in Shichifuku parking lot underneath the bright pretty faces of hosts that Ta-bo’s own could be placed beside (and, memorably, flunked out of doing just that). Ta-bo’s trying to practice a counterstrike that sends the opponent flying, but all he’s managed to do is push Kaito back a metre at most before he gets speared to the ground.

It’s cute that he tries so hard.

Ta-bo slumps against Kaito’s shoulder as he’s hauled up, giggling to himself as Kaito tucks his head under Ta-bo’s arm to support his weight. Kaito’s own body still sings with the giddy rush of having come out the other end of a good fight, and he forgets about the welt on his upper lip as he breaks into a grin.

“You ain’t becoming no dragon anytime soon,” he laughs.

“Fuck you, gimme more time to practice and I’ll send your ass flying across the parking lot.”

 _That_ makes Kaito cackle, imagining Ta-bo in his skinny little jeans sending _him_ \- a bruiser who has at least ten kilos of bulk and muscle over him - into a chain-link fence and creating a yakuza-shaped dent. Maybe in a universe where Kaito’s name was read as _Shoji_ instead of _Masaharu_ and he was a smaller, leaner thing with his own dick-crushing wardrobe. Now _he_ would probably be a host.

They stumble along a meandering route back, favoring smaller streets to avoid attention until Ta-bo bumps his head into Kaito’s chin when they’re in an empty alley adjacent to the office. He stops to see if Ta-bo is being a stubborn prick again and trying to cover up an injury Kaito didn’t notice before, but instead finds himself nose-to-nose with him.

_This is getting dangerous._

“Hey, Kaito-san,” Ta-bo rasps, warm breath passing over Kaito’s lips. “Thanks for spending the time with me ... I know you didn’t need to.”

Kaito grins past the growing beat of his pulse in his ears. “‘Course. Ya get my ass into all kinds of fun trouble - keeps life interesting.”

“Wanna get in some more trouble?”

Hands come up to frame Kaito’s face before he can reply and his world suddenly shrinks to just the soft kiss pressed against his mouth.

Surprise empties out his head as his eyes fall shut and he kisses back without thinking, savouring instead the moment where his hands circle around Ta-bo’s waist ( _too thin_ ) and warm hands move to curl around the back of his neck ( _perfect_ ). It’s slow and gentle, almost romantic, like a moment out of some flowery manga page even with the smell of drying sweat and damp alleyway garbage in the air.

He’s never kissed someone his height before.

The thought wakes him up and he breaks away, but not moving far back enough that the hands around his neck can’t slip down to his chest and settle. 

“Ta-bo.”

The voice doesn’t sound like his, and Ta-bo doesn’t look like himself: lips parted, skin flushed, _hesitant_. Ta-bo closes his eyes with a stuttering breath and opens them again, an embarrassed smile sliding too easily onto his face and something behind his eyes shuttering closed to Kaito.

It’s like an ice pick sliding into his ribs.

“Sorry. Let’s forget about it, yeah?”

Ta-bo hands fist on his chest, and he gives Kaito a light tap on the pec with one before pushing away. Kaito’s grip holds, and Ta-bo grunts as he’s pulled back into their alleyway standoff.

“Don’t - it’s just -” Kaito feels his tongue fumble, too thick and slow in his mouth.

“You can’t or you won’t?”

Kaito sighs. “C’mon, don’t do that.”

“It’s a valid inquiry,” Ta-bo says, his wry expression belying the stiff academic tone.

There it is. Ta-bo was good at shit like this, dressing up whatever was eating him in distractions: scraps in an alley when he was a teen, later cajoling invitations to drink or the arcade. He’s played enough of these games with Ta-bo across ten years, but this new hand from his deck of tricks he hates the most - dignified legalese complicating his already roundabout way of talking, every word just leading to a trap that Kaito doesn’t have the skill to maneuver around. It’s the only fight Ta-bo wins each time.

So Kaito ignores everything he says, pushes him into a shadowed corner of the alley behind a rusted generator, grabs the back of Ta-bo’s head and pulls him into a hard kiss.

Ta-bo makes a noise before he sinks into Kaito’s grip, opening his mouth to Kaito’s tongue with a soft gasp. Fingers dig into Kaito’s back as he pulls Ta-bo flush to his body, his own fingers sunk deep into long hair and slowly combing through the loose curls to rest at the back of Ta-bo’s neck. He tastes like canned coffee and the wrong brand of cigarettes and Kaito burns all of it to memory because he won’t taste it again.

He takes one last sweep of Ta-bo’s mouth, letting his tongue linger as he breaks the kiss ( _wet, too short, but what can you do)_ and just leans their foreheads together as they catch their breath. 

Tomorrow, Yagami sits the bar exam - his second attempt - and if he passes, the crossroads of where they split apart is that much closer. Oyaji’s got a parable he likes to tell the boys, about a hunted man hanging off a cliff and sighting a strawberry plant on an outcrop. You’re _supposed_ to ignore it, focus on your task at hand, real dedicated shit like that - but if you’re gonna die why _not_ enjoy yourself on the way out?

Kaito takes another bite of the berry, kisses Ta-bo a last time before he finally lifts his hands away from Ta-bo’s body and steps back before he loses a fight he can’t afford to. He scrubs a hand at his face and sighs in frustration. 

“That’s all I can do. Sorry.”

“I know.”

Ta-bo is breathless against the wall, eyes closed and head tilted low. Their eyes don’t meet, and after a time Ta-bo is the first to mumble about heading back to the office.

Walking back to the main street, the kiss grows bitter in Kaito’s mouth and his chest feels like a cracking stone.

Maybe oyaji was right.

###### 

#### Higashi

Kaito’s slammed into a wood crate and cuts his hand open as he stops his face from colliding with an oroshi-hocho nearly as long as he was tall. The massive blade clatters to the wet cement ground and Kaito barely manages to roll along the crate edge to avoid a slightly shorter but no less dangerous second knife ricocheting from the spot where his head just was.

“You guys really take this shit too seriously,” Kaito grunts as he grabs a plastic tray and blocks the next hit, valiantly ignoring how the tray appeared to have contained wet fish spines that now slopped their way down his sleeves. “I told ya once and I’ll tell you again, _I’m not here to push on your turf,_ I just wanna buy some fuckin’ fish for my boss!”

The giant butcher holding the not-as-big-as-the-first-one-but-still-fucking-big knife spits on the ground and snarls. “You think we’re as stupid as you? Talkin’ about some family we’ve never heard of, acting as if some asshole like you got any kind of money?”

Kaito rolls his eyes despite blocking another swing and straining under the force of the blade biting deep into the plastic. “ _I’m_ the dumbass here? What kinda yakuza doesn’t like getting _handed_ his money?”

The growing throng of the fish market’s vendors backs up as Kaito pivots and twists the tray so it takes the oroshi-hocho with it, tossing both aside before he falls into a proper fistfighting stance and spreads his feet apart. He’ll stuff the guy’s throat with his own abalone if it means he’ll shut up and let Kaito just finish his goddamn errand -

“ _Tatsugi,_ _what the fuck are you doing?!_ ”

Both men look up as the vendors part, the shout having come from a guy about Ta-bo’s age shoving through the crowd. Kaito vaguely remembers seeing him earlier at a stall he bought mackerel at, some skinny numbers guy with a clipboard and a windbreaker that was two sizes too big. He’s got glasses that age him and a haircut like a salaryman - _the hell is he gonna accomplish here?_

“This isn’t civilian business,” grunts the butcher. “Fuck off back to your uncle’s stall, Higashi.”

“You’re _making_ it civilian business, asshole,” says the new guy as he shoves the butcher away, and Kaito has to take a moment to realise he just read everything completely wrong. There’s something too sharp about this new guy’s eyes, the set of his jaw - nothing about it really says _civilian_ to Kaito. He keeps his mouth shut and watches.

Higashi stands between Kaito and Tatsugi, and Kaito hears the vendors start murmuring amongst themselves as they look on. He doesn’t miss the scattered sneers and tutting, the _just as I thought_ and _typical of them_ comments. He also doesn’t miss how Higashi’s hand is at his back, gripping a sheathed blade he would’ve thought was a tanto before remembering the guy was supposedly a civilian.

Tatsugi grimaces and then mutters something that Kaito can’t make out, and Higashi barks a reply with a scowl and he realises belatedly that they’re not speaking Japanese at all and _oh shit they’re fucking going for it._

Higashi ducks a haymaker and sheds his jacket, throwing it at Tatsugi’s face and bringing the hand back to unsheath his knife in a single motion. It’s not a tanto but a more delicate blade, something meant to fillet smaller fish - sleek and narrow and coming to a point so sharp that Kaito could almost hear it sing through the air.

Without the jacket dwarfing him, Higashi isn’t weedy at all but finely muscled, the worn-out t-shirt with the market’s logo doing nothing to hide any of him. He’s nimble, bobbing between Tatsugi’s strikes and kicking at his knees and stomach; muscles on his shoulders visibly flex as he twists and swings the blade to ward off the much larger man when he gets too close. There’s something a little reminiscent of how Ta-bo fights: quick and elegant and built on kicks, but Ta-bo never danced with a knife like this and his face was never so cold.

Tatsugi easily dwarfed Higashi, but he was getting clipped with the knife nearly every swing he made - too slow and reliant on trying to overpower someone who wove and countered like a snake. Frustration builds enough that Tatsugi bellows and tries to tackle Higashi into a display of iced fish, only to have Higashi sidestep to one side and the butcher barrels into the table by his lonesome. A cascade of crushed ice and fish slide across the cement floor to Kaito’s feet, and Tatsugi just groans as he lies in a heap. Higashi spares him one glance and turns away to pick up his jacket, brow locked in a frown but his mouth impassive.

It was _art_ , and Kaito clapped.

“Are you … serious?” Higashi asks, visibly confused. His ears were growing pink, and wasn’t _that_ interesting.

“ _Hell yeah_. Where the fuck did you learn to fight like that?”

Higashi’s face softens as they talk, and without the scowling his pointed brows smooth out and follow the shape of his eyes. Kaito thinks of the old films oyaji likes to watch during bad weather - it’s an sculpted face if not a handsome one, better suited to haori and kosode instead of a windbreaker and gumboots. Higashi pushes his glasses up his nose and brushes his hair back, a delicate movement when paired with his lowered eyes and the tiniest pleased smile pulling at the corner of his lips.

It’s charming.

Kaito almost doesn’t notice Tatsugi getting up again - too preoccupied with how the pink in Higashi’s ears blooms over his cheeks - and he yanks Higashi by the jacket to shove him behind him before he even finishes shouting a warning. He puts up an arm to guard his face and braces for … nothing.

“My my, you really have to be careful on these wet floors,” Kaito hears oyaji say. “You can slip and fall so easily.”

Kaito looks up, and finds Tatsugi once again on the ground but this time out cold. Matsugane-no-oyaji leans casually against a long hooked pole like it’s a walking stick, toeing at the ice underneath Tatsugi’s prone body.

“Kaito, do you know whose stall this is?”

“Uh -”

“It belongs to my uncle,” Higashi says as he bows low. “I’m sorry for Tatsugi harassing your associate, this is contested territory between a couple families and there seems to have been a misunderstanding.”

“Hm, and why are _you_ apologising when you’re a civilian, I wonder?” Oyaji says with a smile, and Kaito sees how Higashi’s hands freeze up at his sides.

“Ah - well, that is -”

Oyaji laughs. “No matter, I won’t pry. Would you please arrange to have them packaged up? I’ll pay.”

Kaito and Higashi both stare and start talking over each other.

“A-all of them? But they’re -”

“ _Oyaji,_ where are we gonna put -”

“Well isn’t that funny, I didn’t expect to get scolded from two sides today,” Matsugane says, the hint of a threat folded under his genial tone.

Both of them apologize and quickly bow low before setting to work, and Kaito mulls over how strange Higashi is as the two of them load the trunk of the car with carefully wrapped mackerel. Too many things about him just don’t match: the _civilian_ label and how he holds a knife to fight, the speed of his temper and how the flush of red colours his ears -

“Hey, your hand - you’re bleeding.”

Kaito looks down and takes his hand off a packet of fish, wincing at the rust-coloured smears he leaves behind on the plastic wrap. He forgot about the cut, lost against the background noise of everything else that hurts after fighting a giant waving around what was basically a sword in the middle of a crowded fish market. He tries to wipe it against his slacks.

“S’fine, I’ll get it sorted out later.”

Higashi makes a disapproving noise and takes off his work gloves, tossing them on top of the packages in the trunk as he unzips his jacket to pull out a small plastic case from an inside pocket and fuss with its contents. Wordlessly he takes Kaito’s hand and starts to clean it with a wipe, the sharp sting of disinfectant across Kaito’s palm keeping his mind off how something in his chest briefly stuttered when Higashi’s bare hand gripped his.

“Why did you help me earlier?” Higashi asks quietly, his head still bent over Kaito’s hand as he starts to wrap it in a bandage.

Kaito blinks. “You’re a civilian, yeah? No point in you gettin’ caught with a dirty hit when you risked your neck to help me in the first place.”

Higashi stills, mouth opening to speak before he closes it, reconsidering. “I wasn’t helping you,” he says eventually, taping the ends of the wrap on Kaito’s hand. “I was trying to stop our reputation from tanking further. Not that it worked.”

“Eh?”

Higashi huffs through his nose and wipes at his brow with the back of his hand, finally showing fatigue from the scrap earlier. He takes off his glasses to wipe them, casting a rueful look at Kaito that leaves him slightly dumbstruck.

The thing is: that’s a face meant to strike an intimidating figure at night. Kaito can see those sharp cheekbones cutting a shadow over a neon street light, eyes cold with his brow and mouth set firm and ferocious like a nio statue. It’s not a face meant to be seen melancholy, to be vulnerable and bare before a stranger like him - it’s jarring, like he’s just blundered into something private. Still, a small part of him feels pleased to have been allowed to witness it. If he weren’t so lucky, he would’ve missed the small beauty mark under Higashi’s left eye.

He’s in such goddamn trouble now.

“My uncle’s stall is a newer one, and we can’t afford to get pushed out,” Higashi says, his voice shaking Kaito out of his thoughts. “They barely tolerate us here already, and the scraps between these yakuza groups about sales turf just make it worse.”

The beauty mark disappears as Higashi slips his glasses back on and snaps shut the small first aid kit. He retrieves his work gloves and shuts the trunk, leaving Kaito no room to respond but time enough to follow his profile against the morning light. Higashi makes his way to oyaji’s passenger window, bows deep with his hands braced against his knees, and ducks his head politely towards Kaito before leaving to head back to the market.

“Seems like the two of you got along well,” said oyaji as Kaito climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Just tryna figure the guy out,” Kaito says as he turns his hand over to look at the bandage across his palm. Firm, neat, clean - as tidy as the one who wrapped it, a man who keeps a filleting knife tucked under his jacket and whose bare face Kaito is going to have difficulty forgetting.

He starts the car and keeps his injured hand light on the wheel.

“How _isn’t_ he already in some family? I don’t get it,” he mumbles.

“A boy like that grows up in one - it’s in the blood, inevitable like nightfall.”

Oyaji lights a cigarette and takes a drag, slowly blowing out the smoke through the open window.

“I think we’ll see him again.” 

***

Higashi shows up a week later at the Matsugane family office, bruised in the face with knuckles cut up and looking simultaneously scared and ferocious. Kaito skates around the _why_ of his delight at this, thinking _he’s strong and he’s clever and that’s exactly what a small family needs_ , and doesn’t question himself when his hand never leaves Higashi’s back as he presents him to Matsugane-no-oyaji.

“Hm, looks like I got replaced as the favourite,” Ta-bo says as Higashi passes him at the office entrance. “Kaito-san, you dog, I’m not even that worn out yet.”

“The hell you on about?”

Ta-bo just smiles that sly smile of his, following Higashi’s back with his eyes. The look he has dances a little too close to _appraising_ for Kaito’s comfort, and then Ta-bo shoots back a glance with raised eyebrows and gives the thumbs up.

“Nice.”

“I’m gonna punch the hair gel right off ya.”

Ta-bo’s laughter is light and breezy, and Kaito curses without any heat behind it - things are easy, normal. Ta-bo’s one more try from passing the bar ( _third time, do or die_ ), Kaito’s up for a promotion, and Higashi - well. He’s soft but he’s got steel in him, a man who can string more than two sentences together and has a head for numbers - a fuckin’ feather in Kaito’s cap if there ever was one.

He preens when Higashi takes the sake cup, too pleased with himself to pay any mind to Hamura’s sneers. That wolf was always going to claw at his door, but Kaito knows how to handle dogs.

**Author's Note:**

> "Kaito is originally from Nagoya and the only thing he kept from home is that he likes a fancy breakfast" is a thought that lodged itself in my brain and couldn't be shaken loose. Hat tip to anyone who played Y5 and can sniff the references in the first section.
> 
> This fic has been a hard one for me to manage, so I hope finally posting some of it will help things along! This section was shared as part of #yakuzararepair week, Day 5: Fight, which is apt since ... every section has a fight. Never say I don't stay on theme.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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